one two three

  

      This past Saturday I took a swing dancing class through USC’s “Getting Your Hands Dirty With the Arts” event. As I expected there were a lot more females in the class. 5:1 ratio... and that's including the male teacher. We stood in a giant circle and learned the steps, then every couple of minutes the males would move over to the next lady. Now, most of these guys were not... particularly... gorgeous. They were the kinds of guys looking for a girl friend and probably thought a swing class was the perfect opportunity to have girls vying for their attentions. Smart men... their plans worked.  

After each terribly long dry spell, the teacher would yell “SWITCH” and I would literally jump into the geek’s arms. It was sad and ridiculous and I truly wish I had captured my face possessed with rapture on camera. We would dance (albeit awkwardly) and I would pout until the next one would come along ten minutes later. This pathetic cycle made me so aware of the basic human longing to have someone to stand by you-- to have a partner. 

During the droughts between left-footed strangers, I would dance with my imaginary man. As I was placing my hand on his invisible shoulder and let him gently take my hand in his, I thought about how many times I had brushed away the tug to have dance partner. I have nonchalantly flicked away love notes and boys with hopeful dovey eyes since I was in the second grade. No joke. By sixth grade, a guy had gone so far as to tell me he was ‘ready to hang from and tree or put a gun to his head’ if I kept refusing to accept his love. He gave me a crystal carousal music box (which sits on my bookshelf at home to this day) and I filed a report with the principal. Point is... I think I’ve trained myself to daydream about a James McAvoy made just for me, but run a bagillion miles away every time a real boy turns his attentions my way. Some reason or another will always cause my shoulders to instinctively tense up as his gaze falls on the back of my tresses. 

In college! I always thought-- in college, the boys will be more mature, they’ll woo me, i’ll like them, i’ll have a boyfriend then, it’ll be perfect. The more time I spend here at USC, the more I realize that’s not true. Boys still have cooties... they’re still immature... they still treat girls like cheap steaks behind Walmart's meat counter... the majority of them still make me cringe as they awkwardly attempt to flirt. 

Nevertheless, a lovely thought hit me over the head as my imaginary man swung me under his left arm toward the end of the Frank Sinatra song. When the right guy shows up, when this guy in my mind decides to vaporize into flesh and blood in front of me, I’ll know it’s him. He’ll know just how to push my buttons, he’ll know how to surprise me and how much I love fresh flowers and chocolate and holding hands and not wearing shoes. He’ll know when to call, when to come over unannounced, when to shut up, and when to scream at me to stop being a bitch. He’ll be made to fit and he’ll come for me one of these days. So why am I so worried about trying to catch every hunk of man candy that walks past me as I play my guitar on the quad? Those aren’t him, I don’t need to waste my time with them or throw myself at anyone-- because the mr. right (okay mr. right-boyfriend) will come on his own without all my brow creasing and longing looks at the shirtless frisbee players. 

  Until then... it’s one two three... one two three... one two three... turn two three... and think about all the shit I’ll give him for making me wait around for him so long... and he dips me backward over his arm two three...

My Flame

*another creative writing assignment: unreliable monologue*

Downtown LA is such a place. The buildings embody the essence of the jungle turned into a battlefield-- giant shoots of bamboo coated in liquid fiery reflections. I can park myself in the middle of a sidewalk and let the refracted patterns of light dance off of me, taking me back to 1974--what was supposed to be my year. These flames tango off of twenty different individual shoots-- statues, benches, cars, and the miles of glassy windows. Out of nowhere, a patch of unusually intense reflections pooled around me and my chair. It was so other worldly that the 50 American flags I had attached to my chair, head, and body seemed to drink in it’s life water and gain the voice of a thousand gospel choirs to proudly sing of the twilight’s last gleaming. I felt a hot hot, a red hot hot heat build up on the tip of my nose and grow and grow until it began to singe my eyelashes. 

The light quivered. WHO’S broad strips and bright stars! The light steadied and I realized the flames of ’74 had come to revisit me.THROUGH THE perilous flight! It shook harder this time. AND THE ROCKET’S RED glare! I began to feel the heat drawing away from my face. THE BOMBS BURSTING IN... the light was gone and I blinked viciously trying to muster up my strength so I could stand up on my good leg and chase the flames that I had been looking for since I had been pulled away from them in the field in ‘Nam. 

I fell back into my chair and shook my head. The first time I had almost felt the flames’ full ignition, my men drug me away from being consumed in their glory. They beat the flames into smoke that rose in curls off of my charred leg, and put me in a helicopter. At the military hospital they told me that I had been disoriented and was running toward the enemy’s bombs on accident. I yelled at them that it was no accident! That dying there was my purpose! I was born as the perfect tinder and had come for my destiny to be fulfilled. They wrote down on my chart “post traumatic stress syndrome”. They put me in therapy to heal the “psychological damages I had suffered.” What they did not understand was that I had planned to do this my whole life. The war was my calling. That death was my aborted destiny.  

 The flames came to me today, after so many years of waiting, through a bus window. As it pulled away and cut the chorus short, I saw that they had not disappeared with the bus but had transformed into flesh and blood. A girl. Hair so blond it was white. White like a spark. White like the white hot flames that had almost consumed me on the battle field. I wheeled myself to her as she stood there studying a map. I pulled at the piece of paper and told her no need to look for me on the guide, I was here, after all these years, still here and waiting to be consumed by her. She looked at me with fiery blue eyes. Her stare pierced through the dirt and street grime that had caked onto my cheekbones over the years of living out here. I could not take it any longer and grabbed at her dress, trying to rip it off, and get to the heat. She screamed a piercing scream that rung true to what had filled my ears that day in ’74. BOMBS BOMBS, her two bulbous BOMBS were almost exposed and ready to consume me. I felt the familiar hands my fellow soldiers on my shoulders and wrists tugging me down out of my chair beating the flames back to that dirty smoke. The flame stopped her glorious ringing and broke into sobs as my hands were ripped away from her-- the water pouring down to her chin had already drenched out the fire in her eyes. My flame and I, so close yet ripped away from one another, again. 

My Princess

*THIS WAS A WRITING ASSIGNMENT FOR "MY WRITING TO BE READ" CLASS*

(aka rewrite a fairytale from another persons perspective)

They call me Dopey. That’s right. Dopey. It doesn’t make you sound wise like Doc’s name does. It’s not endearing like Happy or Bashful. You’d think that if one of us hated our names it would be Sneezy. Snot, blood-shot eyes, constant congestion. Truth is, he loves the attention of people always saying “Bless you!” Who doesn’t want people sending blessings all the time? If he really didn’t like his name he could take Claritin and they’d start calling him Mike again. It’s me. I’m the one with the problem. Dopey. Sure, I’m statistically everyone’s favorite dwarf, but not because I did something heroic. No. I make people laugh because I’m stupid. I’m liked because I’m the bald runt whose clothes are twenty times too big. Not smart. Not talented. Just... well... dopey. 

  It was an ordinary afternoon and we were marching back from the mines. It had been a bad day, because I tripped on my shirt more than usual and ended up swallowing three rubies and being run over by a jewel cart. I wanted nothing more than to dive under the covers of my little yellow bed and disappear. I ran ahead of the gang and slammed the front door. When I wheeled my knotted up face around, the most beautiful woman was standing there by the fireplace. She was holding a broom and the entire inside of our cottage looked absolutely pristine. Out of her glittering red lips spilled the most joyous giggle. She smiled with teeth that looked like the night stars and shook her silky black hair at me. She said, “Are you the little man who lives here? Did you make this mess?” The insides of my mouth turned into jelly, and I couldn’t do anything but let my shoulders slump lower and lower. Her porcelain-doll-like hand brushed my sooty cheek. Her skin! It looked like powdery slopes of a wintery mountain the morning after a blizzard. Fresh. Clean. Perfect. She was perfect. 

  She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows in expectation of my answer. My big ol’ mouth smooshed around and finally said, “You look like you are snow.” Who says that?! Why did I just say that!? She let another golden laugh slip out and told me I must be very clever because her name was in fact, Snow White. 

  Every morning I would get up early and help Snow White set up for breakfast. I wanted time alone with her, just to watch her hum to herself as she lit the fire. She would tell me her secrets. I was the only dwarf who really knew why she was hiding out in our dingy little cottage. She didn’t want anyone to know she had barely escaped an axed woodsman the day she showed up. Sometimes she told me happy secrets-- like her dreams of receiving the most precious present of all-- true love’s kiss. She said that it was so powerful that it could bring the dead back from the grave. She said she dreamt of a man every night but didn't know if it was all her imagination or if maybe there was a chance that he was a real person somewhere out there. She said he was tall, with brown hair, and he rode a giant white horse. She said he was always wearing a long red cape and carrying a sharp silver sword at his side. 

I was the closest (human) soul Snow White had ever had to a best friend. I listened and held her hand when she would cry about having such a terrible step mother and never seeing her real parents again. I was even taking lessons from her on how to speak to the birds! Snow White was my world and will always have my heart. Now I know what you are thinking-- I’m not tall, I don’t have hair, and I don’t think I could put a saddle on a horse, much less ride one. So what. I’m don’t look like the prince that visits Snow White’s dreams every night. All I can say is that she’s... my princess. 

One day I tried to tell her. Every morning we would line up in our formation to march to the mines for work and Snow White would kiss each of us on the head. I don’t know if it was spring air or the birds that were all screaming at me to “TELL HER!” that gave me courage, but I decided I absolutely could not stand her not knowing a moment longer. She gave me my peck on my bald head and thats when I decided to run back to tell her. I cut the line, right between Happy and Sneezy, but when I got up to her again I got jello-mouthed again. I think she just assumed I was being dopey and holding up the rest of the group. I tried again and again and I finally gave up and decided to tell her directly that evening, first thing! 

   When we came back, she was splayed out on the floor. Absolutely cold. No breath filed in and out of her nostrils. Next to her was lying an apple with a perfect little bite taken out of it. Doc identified it as poisoned. Of course. Of course it was poisoned.

  He said that there was nothing we could do. The next day we laid Snow White in a casket of glass and laid her in the sunny patch of the most beautiful meadow. I lay awake that night heart stricken. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do anything except think of my poor princess. Then it hit me. 

I ran to  the meadow right as the sun was rising. I used all my strength to slide the top off of her glass coffin. My head barely poked over the top, so carefully climbed up and lowered myself in to lay down next to her. She was freezing, but this just had to work. “It could even make the dead rise from their graves.” I gingerly laid my lips on hers. Nothing. I stroked her hair and shifted my weight. I needed to kiss her the way I felt about her. I kissed and kissed. My warm breath sticky and thick on her stoney lips. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. 

I got out of the coffin and laid down on the grass. Letting my tears weave their way through the blades of grass. I pounded my fists on the soil. Why? Thump. Why? Thump. Why?Thump. I stopped and let the fatigue pump though my achy arm. But, the thumping still sounded. Thump. Thump. Thump. It sounded and sounded and began getting louder and louder until I forced my drowning eyes to look up. There, flashing through the trees was a man with a red cape and a white horse. I squinted and saw a sword glinting in the warm mornings rays. I stood up and wailed. I wailed and wailed and wagged my hands up in the air wildly. His horse stopped and turned around. 

It took me a while to convince him to kiss a dead girl. Dwarfs hardly ever cry and they never beg. I suppose it’s hard to say no to a defeated dwarf begging on his knees. He eventually gave in. 

He easily stooped over her face and gave her a lingering peck. I flinched, not able to bear the sight, but she opened her eyes. She smiled her smile of stars. She smiled and swung her arms around his neck and kissed and kissed and kissed him again. He picked up my weak Snow White and cradled her in his strong, normal sized arms. 

Well you know the rest. Happily ever after and all. But not for me. Sometimes your not your true love’s true love. Sometimes she goes and moves away and gets married to a tall rich man who owns a castle. Sometimes you lay your heart out on the lovely snow, but spring comes and whisks it down a river to be lost somewhere deep in the ocean. Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes you are just... dopey. 

Syrupy Fingers

         Last semester I had a bad habit of going to bed very late very often. The problem is that I am an extreme morning person. At precisely seven AM a little invisible alarm clock that only my ears can hear, sounds every morning, without fail. I cannot go back to sleep... ever. Thus, I decided that this semester I would go to bed at eleven o’clock and allow for one night of craziness on the weekend. 

Last night three of my very best friends and I decided to watch Black Swan after we went to an on camera audition for the USC film school’s database. The audition took forever so Natalie Portman and her psychopathic thriller extravaganza had to be pushed back. I thought okay... it’s only an hour of lost sleep... no big deal, I’ll just be a little tired for my nine am class... er... whatever it’s only an hour later than I wanted to be home. 

The four of us piled on top of a bed and snuggled in for the show. Now two of us had seen the movie and two had not. Right after the scene where Natalie is stabbing herself in the cheeks with a nail file we all relaxed and my friend and I announced to the others, “it’s okay guys, that was the last really gorey thriller scene, relax, you may now safely remove your hands from your eyes”. Two seconds later, Natalie turns on a light to a dark kitchen and switches the light on. There stands Natalie's more demonic looking version of herself standing there. We all scream. Kneecaps go into chins, fingernails grab for the nearest body part to dig into, and 16 limbs wag wildly in the air. It’s a good thing no one in that dorm called DPS for a suspected rape... because we were making convincing sound effects. 

  The movie ends and we decide we are HUNGRY. We end up calling a cab and whisking off to a 24 hour diner. As we are waiting for the cab on the curb outside our school, I’m internally going through WWIII. I will not get to my bed until 2. As I sat back and watched my friends giggle and jump around in circles, I decided I had to make a decision and then shut my brain up. I would either be lying in my bed thinking 'I wonder what their doing? I wonder if it’s fun? Should I have gone?' OR I could go and fidget and rip up the wrapping of the straw in a billion pieces while the calculations would be reeling through my feverish brain. I just knew I would be adding the minimal hours of sleep I would be getting and comparing the number to the amount of hours I need to be focused on work the next day. 
       I know, I know. This is ludicrous! I realized, I was being so mean to myself. Either way I would loose and regret and weave a web full of regrets and should haves. I wouldn’t do that to a friend, so why was I doing it to myself? Right then, the cab screeched around the corner and I took a sharp breath in. My friend stretched out her hand. As I grabbed on and leap over the gutter and onto the dog pile I allowed myself to be present. 

This place, The Pantry, was amazing. It hasn’t closed since the day it opened in 1927! The best part was the floor by the cash register. It had at least 20 layers of the different floors the store had recycled through. Tile, wood, plastic, paints... like the rain rings of an ancient tree. The waiters were all short middle-aged men with bow ties and crisp white uniforms. There was everyone from families, to men who looked like they were straight out of “The Godfather”, to sheriffs on their break. We feasted on french toast and a dinosaur sized piece of chocolate cake. I looked around at the wood walls covered in yellow newspaper clippings and sniffed in the maple and grease scents dancing around my head. 

As we deliriously sat on the cab ride home with protruding bellies and droopy eyelids I looked over at the smirks on my buddies' faces. The downtown LA skyline was whooshing past me like frames of an old movie. I looked down... these sticky, maple syrup fingers are worth a lifetime of goodnight rests. 

flight or janitor... take your pick

I love to read... especially when I first wake up. I feel like it’s getting my juices flowing without turning my brain to mush with TV or reading coarse material and having to constantly kick-box with the feeling that I shouldn’t be trying to take in information that I will be tested over when I am virtually half conscious. This morning I decided, in attempt to avoid my unhealthy habits of last semester (i.e. no exercise of the legs but plenty of exercise of the mouth and salivary glands) I would read whilst power walking on the treadmill. I get down to our workout room and I’m burning my calories, engrossed in my mystery novel. Forty minutes and two miles went by in a blink. I stepped off the machine, powered off my e-reader, and let my body needed a second to reorient. 

You know when you get off a moving sidewalk at the airport? You’re laden down with heavy bags and late for a connecting flight in another terminal. When you step off you feel like you have lost the ability to walk and feel more flustered than when TSA felt you up! Well, trying to walk after getting off a treadmill is the exact opposite. I felt like I was floating, like I was one of those “hover round” frisbees. It was astounding how quickly furniture was approaching and how effortlessly I could get across a room. I admit, I probably looked a little silly walking back and forth across the dark study lounge, counting how many steps it would take to get to a wall with a huge smile.

These past few days have been extremely stressful... especially if you are a Theater major-- as ALL the productions for the spring semester are holding auditions in two small evenings. I was trying to unpack the one hundred pounds of clothes on my dorm room floor, clean the unbelievable amount of dust that had adhered itself to my belongings over break, get textbooks, find new classrooms, go to rehearsals and auditions, and finally figure out how to calm myself down enough to form a coherent sentence. Having a month of mama’s cooking and not lifting a finger made me feel like I had just stepped off the moving sidewalk. 

Luckily my ol’ responsible, college minded, multi-tasking survival guide brain kicked in. I remembered what I used to do-- write everything down in a planner and let that serve as my memory bank. Then, I’d give each task my total undivided attention. Time started to fly in class. What should have been stressful auditions turned into silly conversations with directors about my grandmother’s house. I was floating through my new routine. 

A total surrender of your body and mind to the task at hand is your key to receiving funny looks from janitors as you trounce around an abandoned study lounge. Putting unrealistic expectations on yourself to remember and do everything all at the same time will leave you looking through a greasy window at your flight taking off in the distance. 

Big Girl Purse

Last night my parents and I met our very close family friends at one of the (only) upscale restaurants in El Paso. I decided I was going to welcome in the New Year with flair. Dressing as divalicious as possible was a must. I curled my hair and teased it to tears, covered my body in black spandex, and topped it off with my beautiful, new Michael Jackson jacket. I’m talking chains, gold braided thread, and at least twenty gold buttons-- the whole nine yards! Sitting in the pitch black car on the drive over, I was feeling around for my phone inside my clutch. “Lipstick. Lipgloss. Kleenex. Different lipstick. Powder compact... Phone? Phone? Where is the phone?” I pored the entire contents onto my lap. “Ah-ha! PHONE!” As I victoriously dropped each item back into the purse I looked over at my mother and said, “Momma. I am a big girl.” 

She looked at me with a crinkled brow and said, “oooookay.” 

“Remember that little plush purse I had when I was little. It was pink and had ‘Danielle’s Big Girl Purse’ embroidered in yellow thread on the outside. When you opened it up there were lipsticks, a powder compact, a hankie, and a phone. Well, I’m holding the real thing now, and for the first time I don’t feel like I’m getting dressed up for a school dance or just pretending to be adult for others. I really AM a big girl.” I circled the perimeter of a gold button with my index finger as I explained. 

We walked in and the hostess just happened to be an acquaintance I had known my whole life. She was in the exclusive party crowd in high school that was collectively known to not be very fond of me-- which I was okay with because I didn’t want to be friends with people if they did not like me for me anyways. I anticipated my 'big girl' revelation to vanish like a repeat of the scene in Somewhere In Time when Christopher Reeve looks at the date on his penny and is catapulted back to his reality. After a short conversation with her, I joined our quaint little dinner party and it dawned on me as I sat down-- I didn’t loose my footing as bits of my high school past pounded on my doors. Never once was did I shift around on my platform heels. Never did I suddenly feel stupid in my bold outfit and feel like fidgeting with my hair. Never once did I do anything except lounge back in my own skin and smile. How did this happen? Did this happen overnight? When did I suddenly stop pretending to be so calm and confident and actually start being it? When did I start to truly carry that ‘big girl purse?’

A while later, a party of women and men in their early twenties teetered in and sat  at the table next to us. All of them were dressed fairly ridiculously... kind of like Victoria’s Secret bra bar had a baby with the sequin isle at Hobby Lobby. One totted a long, fitted mens blazer, patterned tights, and heels. That’s it. I was sitting in between two of my best friends, both teenage boys, and their eyebrows shot up simultaneously-- but not in a “Whoa baby come over here and share some of that sugar” way, but instead in a “Ah! *cough* Oh dear! You seemed to have forgotten your pants.” I watched her throughout the evening. She loudly attracted seedy guys from the bar, tried to get the dj to go shot for shot with her, and flipped her hair and dangly earrings in just about everyone’s face. However, every once and a while she would retreat to a dark corner to awkwardly tug at her clothing, try and mask her eyes with more eyeliner, and ask the waiter for water before he brought the next round. She would take a deep breath, wipe the crinkles off of her brow, and then jump and sing her way back to her friends. It was all a facade, all a veil to who she really was. Who was she underneath all the revealing clothing? What would she be like if she wasn't pretending to be the woman she thought others would accept? Does she snort when she laughs? Does she do a mean impersonation of Sarah Palin? Does she like drinking milk with her dinner instead of martinis? 

As I walked out of the restaurant, I noticed her sequined purse hung on the back of her chair. Carrying a big girl purse does not make you a big girl... being in your own skin while you carry it, does.